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Unfortunately I had to just give my parents (68 and 67 years old) ground rules for all forms of communication. This happened after my dad got a fake $3000 invoi

Unfortunately I had to just give my parents (68 and 67 years old) ground rules for all forms of communication. This happened after my dad got a fake $3000 invoice from paypal and he paid it. 1. If a service provider you use reaches out via email asking for money, its fake. Login to their online portal (it took a lot of coaxing to get them comfortable with this...) 2. If a service provider reaches out to you via SMS or Phone call, even if they know your account number or other sensitive data: Tell them you will call them back on the phone number listed on their website. If they insist, its fake. 3. If you aren't sure its fake, just ask me to look at it.

notwhereyouare 4y ago
#3 might be something to try and like really hammer home. Be like "I would rather you ask me about 100 different scam attempts and save $1000s then just pay"
ryandrake 4y ago
These are good ground rules. Fortunately or unfortunately, my parents were scammed once pretty early on, I believe for a small amount, so they are well aware of what to look for. But after 10 more years of cognitive decline? 20 more? Who knows if they'll still be on guard. The simple rule of thumb that will keep people reasonably safe is: Do not trust anyone who E-mails or calls over the phone to be who they say they are. If they say they are from business XYZ, hang up the phone and call XYZ's main number and ask for them. While there are exceptions and scammers are getting craftier, incoming calls and E-mail is by far the major attack vector.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
These are all very good. Here's one that saved me a fuckton of tech support time: set up dns adblocking/malware domain blocking right on their network/router settings. Save it to the factory defaults too if supported or put some tape over the reset pinhole button. My stepfather always tries the factory reset button as if it's just a more hardcore reboot to "fix" the internet when the service is simply out.
jliptzin 4y ago
My parents are the same age and have already been scammed a few times. I set up similar rules but I am afraid they might get sucked in again. I don’t understand why law enforcement isn’t doing anything about this. Surely the surveillance dragnet they’ve set up over the last few decades can tell them who is making 750,000 calls a day to elderly people in the US?
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Yeah it's people in Nigeria etc.
- smolder 4y ago
  U.S. political will to make positive and reasonable changes, like legislating that telecoms crack down on scam call sources or prevent spoofing, seems to have fallen apart. So many people are caught up in culture wars, there's only one thing they care to get behind, and it's taking our country back from those terrible, immoral, brain dead people on "the other side". Voters don't deviate from their tribe, so there's little incentive as a candidate to deviate from standard tribe policy, and so votes are inutile with respect to policy. If there's a private sector solution to the scam calls that can be charged heavily for, that's what we're most likely to get. The competent parts of government aren't concerned with this stuff. Congress has to make it a concern, but they mostly toil on behalf of corporate lobbyists. Lobbyists aren't hired to help society at the expense of who they represent. Intelligent, informed voters and honest politicians would have solved this and many other problems already, but we're extremely far from that ideal, and I think still trending away. I've wondered before if posting in HN threads like this one is a better way to influence policy than going to the polls, since someone with influence could be reading. Maybe what I should actually be doing is writing to my representatives, as that's probably more impactful than either.
  - jliptzin 4y ago
    You can do it all; going to the polls takes the least amount of effort out of anything else.

notwhereyouare 4y ago

#3 might be something to try and like really hammer home. Be like "I would rather you ask me about 100 different scam attempts and save $1000s then just pay"

ryandrake 4y ago

These are good ground rules. Fortunately or unfortunately, my parents were scammed once pretty early on, I believe for a small amount, so they are well aware of what to look for. But after 10 more years of cognitive decline? 20 more? Who knows if they'll still be on guard. The simple rule of thumb that will keep people reasonably safe is: Do not trust anyone who E-mails or calls over the phone to be who they say they are. If they say they are from business XYZ, hang up the phone and call XYZ's main number and ask for them. While there are exceptions and scammers are getting craftier, incoming calls and E-mail is by far the major attack vector.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

These are all very good. Here's one that saved me a fuckton of tech support time: set up dns adblocking/malware domain blocking right on their network/router settings. Save it to the factory defaults too if supported or put some tape over the reset pinhole button. My stepfather always tries the factory reset button as if it's just a more hardcore reboot to "fix" the internet when the service is simply out.

jliptzin 4y ago

My parents are the same age and have already been scammed a few times. I set up similar rules but I am afraid they might get sucked in again. I don’t understand why law enforcement isn’t doing anything about this. Surely the surveillance dragnet they’ve set up over the last few decades can tell them who is making 750,000 calls a day to elderly people in the US?

IshKebab 4y ago
Yeah it's people in Nigeria etc.
smolder 4y ago
U.S. political will to make positive and reasonable changes, like legislating that telecoms crack down on scam call sources or prevent spoofing, seems to have fallen apart. So many people are caught up in culture wars, there's only one thing they care to get behind, and it's taking our country back from those terrible, immoral, brain dead people on "the other side". Voters don't deviate from their tribe, so there's little incentive as a candidate to deviate from standard tribe policy, and so votes are inutile with respect to policy. If there's a private sector solution to the scam calls that can be charged heavily for, that's what we're most likely to get. The competent parts of government aren't concerned with this stuff. Congress has to make it a concern, but they mostly toil on behalf of corporate lobbyists. Lobbyists aren't hired to help society at the expense of who they represent. Intelligent, informed voters and honest politicians would have solved this and many other problems already, but we're extremely far from that ideal, and I think still trending away. I've wondered before if posting in HN threads like this one is a better way to influence policy than going to the polls, since someone with influence could be reading. Maybe what I should actually be doing is writing to my representatives, as that's probably more impactful than either.
- jliptzin 4y ago
  You can do it all; going to the polls takes the least amount of effort out of anything else.